St. John of the Cross

Today the Catholic Church celebrates the memorial of St. John of the Cross, one of the most acclaimed of the Christian mystical theologians. He was also a great friend and confidant of St. Teresa of Avila, and, despite the fact his own leanings were toward a more hermitic life, he became involved in her plans to reform the Carmelites, thus pulling him into a life of public service and controversy. (One time, he was imprisoned for nine months for refusing to renounce the Carmelite reforms he and Teresa were pushing.)

John of the Cross is also considered by many to be Spain’s greatest lyrical poet. One commentator suggested that “as a poet, he ranks with the greatest.”

One of John’s shorter poems is titled, Romances – First Romance: On the Gospel “In principio erat Verbum,” Regarding the Most Blessed Trinity. As I re-read it, it struck me as a wonderful poem to share during this Advent season.

In the beginning the Word
was; he lived in God
and possessed in him
his infinite happiness.
That same Word was God,
who is the Beginning;
he was in the beginning
and had no beginning.
He was himself the Beginning
and therefore had no beginning.
The Word is called Son;
he was born of the Beginning
who had always conceived him,
giving of his substance always,
yet always possessing it.
And thus the glory of the Son
was the Father’s glory,
and the Father possessed
all his glory in the Son.
As the lover in the beloved
each lived in the other,
and the Love that unites them
is one with them,
their equal, excellent as
the One and the Other:
Three Persons, and one Beloved
among all three.
One love in them all
makes of them one Lover,
and the Lover is the Beloved
in whom each one lives.
For the being that the three possess
each of them possesses,
and each of them loves
him who bears this being.
Each one is this being,
which alone unites them,
binding them deeply,
one beyond words.
Thus it is a boundless Love that unites them,
for the three have one love
which is their essence;
and the more love is one
the more it is love.

He Preached Good News to the People

Today’s Gospel from St. Luke, which tells of John the Baptist preaching to the crowds, ends with the line, “Exhorting them in many other ways, he preached good news to the people.”

I’m wondering how many of John’s hearers would have characterized what he said to them as “good news.” The exhortations reported in the Gospel include telling the crowds: “Whoever has two cloaks should share with the person who has none. And whoever has food should do likewise.” And telling the tax collectors, “Stop collecting mroe than what is prescribed.” And telling the soldiers, “Do not practice extortion, do not falsely accuse anyone, and be satisfied with your wages.”

I’m guessing that not everyone who heard these words were all that pleased with them. And lest you shake your head about “those silly people back then,” there are plenty of us sitting around with extra cloaks in our closets and extra food in our pantries while many have no warm coats and nothing to eat. And plenty behaving in ways John warned the tax collectors and the soldiers against.

The “good news” is not always words that are easy to hear…”good” is not always either easy or pleasant. And so we all need Johns in our midst, prophets who challenge us, who call us to something more. And, as we are all called to preach the good news, we are all called to be a prophetic voice to others.

Compassionate Mother Mary

Today is the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a day which celebrates the appearance of Mary to Jan Diego in Tepeyac, Mexico. It is reported that she declared to him, “I am your most merciful Mother…I want to show my loving clemency and compassion to those who call upon me in their sorrows.”

I want to show my loving compassion. Joyce Rupp calls Mary “the feminine embodiment of the divine quality of compassion,” and, indeed, one of her titles if “Mother of Sorrows.” Having stood with her Son at the foot of the cross, Mary stands ready for all time to stand with us in our own suffering and need.

In a wonderful book titled, Your Sorrow is my Sorrow, Rupp explores how Mary can give us hope and strength in our times of suffering. Among the prayers she includes to Mary is this one, which invites us to draw inspiration from Mary’s own experiences:

Mary, you have been there before me.
Your heart opened wide to embrace Jesus
when you met your son on his way to death.
You felt the depth of his suffering.
You entered his wounded path of pain.

I, too, need courage and spiritual stamina
to be with the pain of my own journey.
Teach me how to be with my suffering.
I want to meet myself as lovingly
as you met you wounded and pain-filled son.

Woman of Compassion, Mother of Sorrows,
I draw inspiration from your journey.
I, too, can move through the pain of my present situation.
Your faith and courage lead me to my own.

Advent Retreat in Daily Living – Our Response To God’s Invitation

This week was the third gathering of the four week Advent Retreat in Daily Living I’m giving at the University of St. Thomas School of Law. Our theme for this week is Our Response to God’s Invitation. We konw that God constantly invites us in different ways to participate in the building of Kingdom. The question is: how do we respond to that invitation.

After the participants spent some time sharing their prayer experiences of the past week, I talked about the challenge that God’s invitation raises for us: Do we want to be transformed? Do we really want the inner conversaion required to truly put Christ at the center of our lives? Advent is a time for serious examination and my invitation to the reatreatants this week is to focus on how they respond (or fail to respond) to God’s desires for them.

You can find the talk I gave here . (The podcast runs for 20:35). The prayer material for this first week of the retreat, which I reference during the talk, can be found here.

Home and Belonging

Like all of us, I have contradictory impulses. I find in myself seemingly opposed desires, and tendencies, which operate with greater or lesser strength at different times.

One of those for me has to do with a sense of home and belonging. On the one hand, I have a strong desire to be free to go wherever God calls me. I have what one of my friends termed a strong missionary streak and that side of me likes the idea of being ready and able to pick up and go wherever I am led by the Spirit, be it Nepal and India (as I did in my younger days) or Minnesota (where I am now), without anything to hinder me. That is the side of me that sees my path as a series of pilgrimages. The side of me that gets nervous when I feel like I have too many belongings, too much “stuff.” For that part of me, notions like “home” and “belonging” have no place.

But there is also a part of me that desires to feel a sense of home, to feel like I belong somewhere. I think it is not an exaggeration to say that in most periods of my life I have not felt a sense of home and belonging, feeling like I didn’t (and don’t) fully fit in wherever I am. There has often times been a feeling of rootlessness and homelessness. And sometimes feeling rootless and homeless bothers me, making me feel unanchored and alone.

I’ve been sitting with a question my spiritual director asked me the other day when we were talking about this. She asked, “Do you want to pray to feel more at home here [in the Twin Cities]?” As soon as she asked it, I realized it was a question I couldn’t answer on the spot.

I spent a long time sitting with the question and what I came to realize is that the answer to it is No. When I look at the two contradictory tendencies and ask myself that question, I realize that the deeper desire is for it not to be important that I feel at “home” in any physical place here. That what I want most deeply is to be totally willing and free to go wherever God may want to send me. I think of the line in Matthew’s passage where Jesus observes that “foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head,” and I want it to not matter where I lay my head.

When I can get in touch with that deeper desire, I can recognize that the feelings of homelessness and rootlessness, and perhasp even the desire for a sense of home, is a reflection of Augustine’s recognition that “God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” That doesn’t mean the feeling of homelessness won’t continue to well up and occasionally make me feel sad. But it does help me to understand and accept the feeling for what is it when it arises.

Come to Me

Today’s Gospel from Matthew is a short statement from Jesus that always has a powerful effect on me. Jesus invites the crowds, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” It is an invitation that I feel to the depth of my being at times when I’m feeling overwhelmed and anxious.

The tendency at those times is to sink within ourselves to see only me and my challenges and difficulties. When the gaze is all on me and my difficulties, the burden can seem unbearably heavy. It can seem impossible to carry. But if I can let myself see Jesus in those moments, the burden becomes much lighter. If I can let myself be with Him, to rest in Him, I am refreshed and strengthened.

The reminder that our rest and our strength is in Christ is one we all need now and then. The first Mass reading this Gospel is paired with is the beautiful passage in Isaiah (among the wonderful things about Advent is hearing Isaiah proclaimed every day) where we are told that God “gives strength to the fainting,” renewing our strength so that we can “soar as with eagles’ wings.” With the strength of God, we can “run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint.”

The invitation to come to Christ – to be refreshed and recharged, to be strengthened by him, is always on the table. It is for us to decide whether to accept the invitation.

Taking Responsibility

When I was a very young child (I’m talking really young, age 3 or so), I had a friend named Arthur, with whom I used to get into all sorts of mischief. Whenever Arthur and I got caught doing something we weren’t supposed to be doing, our first response was always, “Dee-Dee did it,” Dee-Dee being my younger sister, Diane, who was about 1 at the time. It was nothing short of preposterous to think she could have done any of what we had attributed to her, but that was our line and we stuck to it, time and time again.

In today’s first Mass reading from Genesis, we hear God accusing Adam and Eve of doing something He had told them not to do. And what is their response? Adam says, Eve did it – she gave me the fruit. Eve says, the serpent did it, he tricked me into eating of the tree.

Whatever else one thinks of the Genesis story, it illustrates a common tendency – finding someone else to blame for what we’ve done. Not taking ownership of whatever our failings and mistakes happen to be. To be sure, there are times when things are not “our fault,” where external circumstances are such we are not responsible for what occurs. Nonetheless, where the first impulse is to blame another, it becomes too easy to avoid taking responsibility for what is really our doing.

I was a debater in high school and my debate coach had many rules, some of which I thought were a bit inane. But one of his rules was one that served us remarkably well. The rule was that we could never blame the judge when we lost a round. We were never permitted to say the judge was biased or made a mistake or any other variation on those themes that might excuse a excuse our losing a ballot.

Now the reality was that there were some really bad judges out there and they sometimes made bad decisions. There were also some judges who were nowhere near objective. (I was once judged in a round by the aunt of my opposing debater.) Nonetheless, his view was that if we started blaming judges for our losses, it would be too easy to get into the habit of doing it, of making excuses. And that habit and those excuses would prevent us from examining seriously what we could have done better.

My coach’s advice was good. And it is something worth taking to heart outside of the context of debate rounds. There are doubtless many things out of our control. But our first line response when we fall short can’t be to find someone else to blame. It has to be to look inward, not to blame or beat up on ourselves. But to simply examine what we might have done differently.

Love the Ones You’re With

Today is the birthday of a dear friend of mine who lives back on the East Coast, which means I can’t celebrate it with him in person. My aunt, who also lives back on the East Coast, was recently diagnosed with a serious illness, and I’m not there. Another friend just moved even further away.

One of the consequences of moving around so much at various times in my life is that I’m often living far away from people I love dearly, people I would love to be able to spend more time with. Particularly at times when a family member or a friend is suffering from an illness or some other difficulty, I am saddened by the limitations on my ability to be present to them. And I also miss being there to celebrate the joys, big and little. (Phone and skype may be the next best thing to being there, but they are still not the same as being physical present.)

As I sat reflecting on that, and feeling a bit sad that I can’t take my friend out to lunch today, what came into my mind was a line from an old song from my younger days, “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.” In the context of the song, that line feels like an invitation to infidelity. But it also speaks a truth in this context. What I hear God saying in that line is: Love where you are, wherever that happens to be. Love here and now.

None of that diminishes the love I have for those who are not with me. That love is strong and grows and there is nothing wrong with missing and looking forward to being back with my family and friends. But it is a reminder that I can’t let my longing to be with those who are far away keep me from being present to those who are here. There will be times for me to be with those who are not with me here in more proximate ways than Skype and phone or other electronic means of communication. But while I am here, I also need to love the ones I’m with.

Testifying to the Light

Every year on the Second Sunday of Advent, we hear about John the Baptist, about whom I’ve written before. Luke tells us in today’s Gospel that John “went throughout the whole region of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentence for the forgiveness of sins.”

John the Baptist was given an important role. He was, in the words of Isaiah quoted in Luke’s Gospel, the “voice of one crying out in the desert: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.” Or, as it is put in the prologue to John’s Gospel, he “came for testimomy, to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.” And John reminds us that “he was not the light, but came to testify to the light.”

I often say about John that what makes him so special to me is that he knew it wasn’t about him and that was OK with him. He knew that his job was to point the way to Christ and to help us prepare to receive Him.

John the Baptist is a worthy role model for all of us. When we are tempted to put the focus on ourselves, John should be our reminder that we too are messengers.Like John, we are all charged to testify to the light, to point the way to Christ by our words and our deed. To prepare not only ourselves to receive Christ, but all those with whom we come in contact.

Last year on this Second Sunday of Advent, I posted a podcast with a reflection on John the Baptist. The post, from which you can stream the podcast, is here.

Come, And You Will See

Among the e-mails automatically delivered to me each day are daily reflections by Richard Rohr (although I confess they sometimes pile up so that I end up reading them two or three at a time).  The current set of reflections is adapted from Rohr’s Preparing for Christmas.

Yesterday’s reflection makes an important point that it took me a long time to realize.  Rohr writes:

Jesus says, “I am not asking you to just believe my words, look at my actions, or the ‘works that I do.’”…

The longer I have tried to follow Jesus, the more I can really say that I no longer believe in Jesus. I know Jesus.  I know him because I have often taken his advice, taken his risks, and it always proves itself to be true! 

Jesus is not telling us to believe unbelievable things, as if that would somehow please God.  He is saying much more to us, “try this, and you will see for yourself that it is true.”  But that initial trying is always a leap of faith into some kind of action or practice….

Part of my difficulty with Catholicism when I was a teenager was feeling like I was simply being asked to believe a set of propositions about God and Catholicism, that I was expected to take everything on faith, without the need to understand anything. It seemed at the time as thought the answer to any question I had was, “Well, that’s just one of the mysteries. You just have to take it on faith.” That was not all that satisfactory an answer to me.

That discomfort is no small part of the explanation for why Buddhism was initially so appealing to me. The Budddha said, don’t believe anything because I or anyone else says it. Instead, when he taught his Four Noble Truths, he said, practice, meditate, and this is what you will experience.

What I didn’t appreciate then is the chasm between my experience of Catholicism as a youth and what is reflected in the quotation from Rohr above. As I read it, I was reminded of the passage in John’s Gospel, where some followers of John the Baptist start following Jesus. When questions them, they ask where he is staying. He responds, “Come, and you will see,” an invitation that is about much more than learning Jesus’ address. And when the imprisoned John the Baptist sends his disciples to ask Jesus if he is “the one who is to come, or should we look for another,” Jesus responds, “tell John what you have seen and heard” of what Jesus has done. Not believe who I am because of what I say, but because of what I do.

The most important thing we can do is to accept Jesus’ invitation to come to know him, more and more. It is from that experience of Jesus that everything else will flow. And that does take a leap – not into blind belief of a set of propositions – but into prayer and action.

You can sign up for Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations here.